Consolidation (EC-CS) 

Purpose

This application component features consolidation functions you can use for external (statutory) rendering of accounts as well as internal (management) reporting.

To do this, this component offers different consolidation types that are based on user-definable organizational units. Specifically, you can perform consolidation for companies, divisions, business areas or profit centers.

In the component, the consolidation types are represented by dimensions. For example, you can define one dimension for company consolidations and, at the same time, another dimension for profit center consolidations. Each dimension lets you process flexible and, when needed, parallel hierarchies of consolidation units and consolidation groups:

●     Flexible hierarchies means that you can use any number of hierarchy levels, define these hierarchies in variable depths, and maintain these hierarchies easily and clearly.

●     Parallel hierarchies means that you use different criteria for structuring the consolidation units of each type of consolidation (e.g., business area consolidation). For example, one hierarchy could have a structure of consolidation units as companies, another hierarchy could have a structure with business segments.

The component features the ability to use different consolidation charts of accounts. For example, this lets you generate consolidated statements for both German HGB requirements as well as US GAAP – in parallel.

You can use consolidation versions to maintain different categories of data, such as actual data, prognostic data or budget data.

Integration

The application features integration functions with different SAP transaction modules that provide data for consolidation; this is available for the consolidation types company consolidation, business area consolidation and profit center consolidation. The integration functions enable the following:

●     Generation of the organizational units of consolidation, based on the units in the transaction system.

There must be a clearly defined relationship between the organizational units of the transaction system and those of the consolidation system before an automatic transfer of data can take place.

●     Automated collection of transaction data.

Several data transfer methods are available. A prerequisite for the collection of transaction data is that the data carried in local charts of accounts be converted for the aggregated chart of accounts in Consolidation. In some consolidation scenarios the transaction data can even be collected into different consolidation charts of accounts.

Features

●     Different methods are available for transferring the transaction data to the Consolidation system. Which method you use depends on your consolidation scenario.

●     You can post manual entries, for example to standardize the reported data to the group's methods of balance sheet valuations.

●     You can use validations to check the consistency of the reported or standardized financial data.

●     You can translate the reported financial data into the currency of the consolidation group.

●     You can automatically execute the following consolidation tasks:

○     Interunit eliminations (elimination of payables and receivables, elimination of revenue and expense, elimination of investment income)

○     Elimination of interunit profit/loss in transferred inventory

○     Consolidation of investments

○     Reclassifications

The automated postings are controlled by the task settings you previously define in Customizing.

The logic of the consolidation tasks remains the same for all types of consolidation. For example, the system uses the same logic when executing interunit eliminations for either company consolidations or business area consolidations.

●     You can generate reports using the standard tools in drilldown reporting, and the Report Painter or Report Writer of mySAP ERP. There are also existing reports for listing master data, additional financial data and the control parameters.

The entire consolidation process can be broken down into two areas:  a) the collection and preparation of reported financial data, and b) the consolidation of the financial data. Both of these areas have their respective monitor, which you can use to maintain and execute all of the individual tasks.

Constraints

The automated execution of the elimination of IU profit/loss in transferred assets is not available in this release.